First, the Risen Savior myth played out in many places in the world. Christianity gained street cred by attaching itself to an old and established religion, Judaism.

This leads to….

Rome was a very superstitious place, and much magic was based on writing. Romans had a myriad of good luck charms, health and protection talismans, and curses against rivals. (This was the norm around much of the world at the time.) Like the Greeks and Etruscan, from whom Rome borrowed the foundation of much of their religion an magic traditions, many of these charms were written in Latin, Greek, Etruscan (in Rome itself, where remnants of the language survived a couple centuries into the Empire), and occasional other odd languages.

So…

To be a citizen of Rome, you had to acknowledge the Roman gods. (Usually, your country’s gods would be incorporated, as there was always a new god to pray to.) The main group that was exempt from this was the Jews. The Romans respected to the point of fear their books, quite literally, their books. Jews in the Roman Empire also had a literacy rate of over one in four (it’s been too many years for me to remember exactly, I think the number was around 40%), which was shocking and “magical” to Romans, who preferred to have slaves read for them.

For centuries, the Jews were allowed to be Jews, in all their Judaic Jewishness, even in Rome. They did not have to convert. This was because they had a big book that a lot of Jews could read.

And back to the point….

Christians attaching themselves to Judaism was a way to survive in Rome. Many early branches of Christianity wanted nothing to do with the Jews or were even against the Jews (Dr. Ehrman’s book “Lost Christianities” is good here), but the Christianity of Rome became dominant, and the “Holy Roman Church”.

And the short version: We have the Old Testament because the Romans were superstitious and afraid of books and so Christianity had to pull the marketing stunt of attaching itself to Judaism to survive, and that’s the form of Christianity that survives to this day.

You know sure as shit that every white child in Alabama imagines himself as a plantation owner at the height of the Confederacy, but no black child imagines himself as a plantation worker. The South was planning on moving the slaves from the fields into factories. Given how children and immigrants and the poor were treated in factories in the North and West, the result could only have been a nightmare.

Given by Alexander Stephens, the first elected Vice President of the Confederacy, with the name taken from the line: “its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man”.

Those trying to polish the Confederate-pride turd generally say that this speech should be ignored, as it was off-the-cuff and not a prepared speech. So, a sitting vice president says in an address, “Subordination is his [the Negro’s] place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.” That should be ignored?

It should be noted that among those claiming that the South was on the verge of outlawing slavery on their own is none other than serial-philanderer Newt Gingrich. Because, you know, Jesus loves Freedom.

Did as you suggested, signed up at Audible and downloaded Hitchen’s book as my free one. Through 6 chapters at work today and it’s awesome!

Not sure how others found your podcast, but for me it was as simple as looking up Astronomy Cast, then following the “Listeners also subscribed to…” thing. Skeptics with a K, Skeptoid, and SGU eventually led Cognitive Dissonance to be on that list, along with several others I now subscribe too.

Really, it was just a fuck-fest of fucked-upped-ness this week – so many assholes, only one podcast. It would make me a little sad if you guys didn’t make it so damn hilarious, so thanks for that!

You have a Danish listener in me, by the way.

I don’t know if it’s interesting, but I found you guys through the yearly podcast awards – I went there to vote for The Young Turks and stumbled upon both this podcast and the ‘Ardent Atheist’ one in the process. Votes well spent, I have something new to listen to after finishing my catch-up on ‘The Amazing Atheist’, the ‘Non-Prophets’, ‘Godless Bitches’ and ‘Ask an Atheist’.